


Nine Dollar Tip

by howboutinotdothis



Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: M/M, OOC, connor is delivering pizzas, evan's awkward af per usual, idk man probs occ, im too lazy to even fix that tag i think that tells you how much effort i put into proofreading this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-09
Updated: 2017-05-09
Packaged: 2018-10-30 00:50:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10865607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/howboutinotdothis/pseuds/howboutinotdothis
Summary: It all starts in the spring of his junior year.Evan’s puttering around the kitchen, laptop opened on the counter, checking the cabinets and the refrigerator for what must be the third time in the hopes that food will magically appear and he’ll be able to avoid ordering anything. Sadly, the only thing resembling sustenance is a package of freeze burned fish sticks and eating those would be a one-way ticket to Dr. Sherman’s office. Or the emergency room.Preferably the emergency room.





	Nine Dollar Tip

**Author's Note:**

> this is probably ooc but i wrote it in my head in the shower so like that's what happens
> 
> for a tumblr request, requests are still open btw so if you want to request something just hmu at @jaredkleinmanisanerd
> 
> comments/kudos/crit always welcome!

It all starts in the spring of his junior year.

Evan’s puttering around the kitchen, laptop opened on the counter, checking the cabinets and the refrigerator for what must be the third time in the hopes that food will magically appear and he’ll be able to avoid ordering anything. Sadly, the only thing resembling sustenance is a package of freeze burned fish sticks and eating those would be a one-way ticket to Dr. Sherman’s office. Or the emergency room.

Preferably the emergency room.

Evan pulls the plastic bag holding the fish sticks out of their box, opening it and grimacing when an overwhelming fishy scent wafts out of the container. To be completely honest, Evan isn’t entirely sure they even _are_ fish sticks; they look like a rubbery, discolored parody of fish sticks. Despite being in the freezer for an unfathomable length of time—because Evan swears the fish sticks have been in there since he was in elementary school, at least—they’re mushy and soft in the worst way.

If he eats these, there is a high probability that he will actually die. While the whole dying thing doesn’t sound like the worst thing that could happen, Evan would rather not go out over a couple of spoiled fish sticks, you know?

Plus, if he didn’t die, his mom would move up his appointment with Dr. Sherman and she’d get all upset over Evan refusing to order food like a normal person and she’d do that thing where she’s like “maybe I should take a break from classes for a while, I’m worried about you, bud” and Evan would have to spend an hour convincing her that he’s fine, that she doesn’t need to drop out of school, that he’s a semi-functional teenage boy who can keep himself alive while she’s at class. And that’s just. A lot of stuff he doesn’t need right now.

With a deep sigh, Evan returns the fish sticks to the freezer to be agonized over another day and pulls up the website for the pizza place he and his mother order from. It’s a local chain, so they only started taking online orders about a year ago, which is when his mom switched from stocking the kitchen with bread and peanut butter so he could make himself sandwiches to leaving a crumpled twenty on the table for him to order out. Because, you know, ordering online takes out the whole talking on the phone thing, which Evan hates with a passion because talking on the phone is stupid, you can’t see the other person’s expression so you don’t know if they’re angry or sad or what, and sometimes it’s hard to hear the other person and you keep having to ask them to repeat themselves and eventually you just give up and pretend you understand what’s going on even though you still don’t know what they said—but, anyways, his mom figured that cutting out the talking on the phone bit would mean that Evan would have no problem ordering pizza. Which was wrong. Incorrect. False.

You see, when the pizza delivery person arrives to your house, you have to retrieve the pizza from them and give them your money and then if you don’t have exact change—Evan never has exact change—you have to wait for them to make change and hand it back and then you have to give them their tip and this whole time you’re supposed to be making small talk and smiling so you don’t seem like a completely pathetic human being who can’t keep up a conversation about traffic on a Wednesday afternoon.

Evan hates that part. He hates how he accidentally fumbles when he’s exchanging the dollar bill for the pizza, he hates how all he can manage to get out when the pizza guy says something is a nervous “mmhm,” he hates how he nearly drops the change on the ground, he hates how he never knows what an appropriate tip is, he hates—he hates _all of it_ , the whole stupid exchange, so he avoids it. Because that’s what people _do_ when they hate something, they avoid it and try to pretend it’s fine that they do.

The mouse hovers over the order button. He doesn’t want to do this. He _really_ doesn’t want to do this. He _can’t_ do this.

He presses the button.

The page telling him how long it’ll be before the pizza gets here pops up and Evan can’t decide if an hour wait is better or worse than the usual half hour wait. He gets to put off the inevitable social interaction with the pizza delivery guy for longer, but he also has more time to obsess over it and wish that time travel was a thing so he could go back about twenty seconds and stop himself from ordering the pizza.

Evan settles in on the couch in the living room so that he’s only a couple feet from the door, ready to pop up the moment the pizza guy steps on the porch. The twenty dollar bill remains clenched in his hand, slightly moist because of its contact with his damp hands, but he’d rather hand over a sweaty bill than have to run around the house trying to find the money when the guy gets here. Evan’s tempted to watch some YouTube videos to try to calm himself down—something with cute cats or maybe a funniest vine compilations, those are always nice—but he doesn’t want to start watching something and then get all absorbed in it and not hear the doorbell. Then the pizza guy would start banging on the door and Evan would freak out because he’d think it’s an axe murderer and then he’d end up hiding in his room until the pizza guy leaves and then the pizza guy would have to pay for Evan’s pizza himself and the pizza place would blacklist Evan and never let him order from there ever again and his mom would be crushed because she says that’s the best pizza in town and then she’d kick him out of the house because he’s an incompetent loser who got them banned from a pizza place because he couldn’t just wait to watch cat videos and—

The doorbell rings once, twice, three times. Evan takes a deep breath, trying to calm his rapid heartbeat and fix his ragged breathing. Well. Almost having an anxiety attack is one way to pass the time for the pizza guy to get there.

Evan wipes his hands on his sweatpants and walks over to the door, frowning when the pizza guy rings the doorbell for the fourth time. He gets that delivery people have a schedule but the guy barely gave him ten seconds to reach the door before he rang the bell again. Evan takes a second to open the door, trying to pull it open before realizing that it’s locked and fumbling to undo the deadbolt before the pizza guy makes his impatience known once more by laying on the buzzer because Evan’s already more than a little stressed with the four rings, he’d rather not make it five.

He overestimates how much force he needs to use to open the door—he guesses that his mom finally got their neighbor to fix the hinges so it won’t stick as bad anymore—and so it flings open a little more dramatically than necessary, making Evan’s face burn. This is why he shouldn’t order pizza.

The delivery boy merely raises an eyebrow at the flung open door, acting as if someone violently opening a front door isn’t particularly unusual, and Evan is—well.

He’s still embarrassed, yeah, but he doesn’t have much room in his brain to be fretting over his inability to function like a normal person because the pizza guy is just. Really attractive.

“Evan Hansen?” The pizza guy has a really nice voice too.

Evan spends longer than is socially acceptable staring at this guy, only coming back to himself when the other boy’s lips quirk up slightly in a smug little smile and repeats his name. “Oh, um, y-yeah, that’s, uh, that’s,” Evan takes a deep breath. “I’m Evan. Hansen.”

“Cool. 10.63.”

Evan’s motions are jerky and spastic as he hands over the twenty dollar bill and accepts the awkwardly shaped pizza box. He’s sure his face is bright red and he can feel his hands getting sweatier by the second and his only hope at this point is that he can get out of this situation before he embarrasses himself in front of this unfairly cute delivery guy.

Well. You know, embarrasses himself worse than he already has.

The guy—Connor, his name tag reads— _Connor_ is about to hand him back his change, which he made very fast and without any small talk at all and Evan thinks that he wouldn’t mind getting his pizzas delivered by this guy if he wasn’t so handsome. Is that discriminatory against attractive people? Attractive people just make his anxiety skyrocket, and Evan doesn’t need anything else to make his anxiety any worse. He’s doing that just fine by himself.

“Um, you can, uh—you can just keep the, the change. Thanks.” _Stupid, stupid, stupid. Why are you so fucking stupid?_

“That’s a nine dollar tip, you realize that, right?” Connor’s tone seems to suggest that he too finds Evan’s actions idiotic, but Evan’s already committed to doing it now and he feels like it’s weird to backpedal now and basically take away the money he’s already given Connor.

“Mmhm. Yeah.” Evan nods jerkily to emphasize his point and he has the weird feeling that he probably looks like a bobble head right now. _Great. Evan Hansen, master of first impressions._

“Okay,” Connor says, but he says it less like just ‘okay’ and more like ‘okaaaaaay’ which makes Evan think that he’s being even weirder and stupider than he thinks he’s being and he thinks he’s being really weird and stupid already so Evan must have like. Ascended to a higher level of weirdness and stupidity than was previously known to mankind. “Have a nice night, Evan.” And just like that Connor’s leaving his porch, heading back to the car parked on the curb outside of Evan’s house.

“You—you too!”

Before Evan slams his door and starts berating himself for how incredibly awkward he was being, because _wow_ was he being awkward, he catches a glimpse of a ponytail peeking out of the back of Connor’s uniform hat and he can only imagine how gorgeous Connor must look with his hair down.

Evan collapses on the couch, pizza box in hand, and tries his best to just. Pretend none of that happened.

While he’s shoveling the gooey, cheesy pizza into his mouth and watching some weird prank video Jared sent him the link to, Evan thinks back on the little smug smile Connor made when Evan was gawking at him like a complete imbecile. It was—it was a _really_ nice smile.

He wouldn’t mind seeing that again.

And he does when he orders pizza on Friday. Then on Monday. Then on Thursday. Then a couple times a week every week for the rest of the semester. And most of the summer.

Evan decides that maybe ordering pizza isn’t so bad after all.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [just believe you can be who you want to be](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10871334) by [nosecoffee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nosecoffee/pseuds/nosecoffee)




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